In numerous applications, a need arises to be able to locate in relatively accurate manner a source of noise in order to take measures to neutralize it. Numerous solutions are known in the prior art for acoustically locating noise sources. The main known solutions make use of techniques for correlating signals delivered by detection sensors.
Those techniques present the drawback of being particularly sensitive to interfering noise occurring in the environment of the measurement sensors. Furthermore, it must be considered that those techniques constitute specific methods that are adapted to each application under consideration.
The technique in most widespread use involves antennas having a large number of sensors (several hundred) and a large computer system implementing beam forming so as to aim in a given direction in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. That method does not make any a priori assumption concerning the number of sources and any possible correlation between them, which leads to a loss of resolution.